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Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Uh oh, Pearson Shuts Down Entire Colorado Testing System

Update: now it's SBAC. Nevada, Montana and North Dakota have shut down testing because of a "computer glitch."

According to the Nevada Department of Education, a spike in
students taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBAC) this morning in
Nevada, Montana and North Dakota exceeded the data capacity of Measured
Progress, a third-party vendor contracted by the states to provide the
test.

All testing in the three states has been stopped until Measured
Progress can increase its data capacity, according to an email sent to
state superintendents today by state deputy superintendent Steve
Canavero.

Think about it. The vendor didn’t know that so many students would be taking tests at the same time. What were they thinking?

Seriously? Is any state really going to count either PARCC or SBAC results? Because this is ridiculous.

"Technical difficulties" caused
computerized testing in Colorado to "not operate optimally" Tuesday
morning, according to the Colorado Department of Education. The window
for new, required science and social studies testing developed by the
state opened Monday for Colorado's 179 public school districts.

A District 11 teacher said about mid-morning, half-way into the testing, "the whole thing just shut down.""It was like crash and burn," he said.

Statewide, 34,396 students were testing on
Tuesday, Anthony said. That's down from the 46,800 that tested on
Monday, the first day of the window.

The glitch occurred at a time when
state lawmakers are debating several bills to reduce standardized
testing and change the requirements.

This is thought to be the first time that such a statewide shut-down
occurred with the new testing system. The D-11 teacher said last year,
during the trial run, one-third of students testing at his school could
not answer questions related to animation they were supposed to watch
because the program did not work properly.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

While we didn't have anything on that scale here, my 4th grader had to retake one of the English section of the SBAC (fortunately not the part with the essay). She was one of about 6 kids in her grade that had to retake it because the computer apparently did not capture the answers.

Why would YOU allow your child, your 9 or 10 year old little girl, to be forced to sit through ANOTHER 2 hours of testing? What was in it for her? When will you say no more, what will it take? They make a mistake, and she pays for their mistake with her time?

I did not know about it until after the fact, when she came home from school & told me. She didn't seem to mind - she seemed to think it was kind of amusing to be pulled out of class. Of course, she's the kind of kid who gets in trouble at times because she thinks everything is kind of amusing...Mom of 4

It was interesting to read that the high school teachers could not figure out the correct answer to SBAC ELA practice test.

Also a WA state teacher reported the following on the actual ELA SBAC test

"The 3rd grade SBAC ELA included many poorly worded questions, ambiguous answer choices, and design issues that forced kids into choosing a different answer than the one they intended. Many of the questions are hidden within 8 sentence block of texts. Kids are having to read these blocks of text multiple times to understand what they are even supposed to do – and honestly, many of them don’t understand what the question is asking because the questions are not worded in vocabulary 3rd graders are familiar with. There is no special formatting of text such as block text or italics to differentiate a question, a quote, etc. It’s terrible."

It's interesting that these sorts of flaws are apparently not enough to stop the SBAC from being administed. I hope all teachers will be able to somehow give feedback on what they think of the test.

Education Acroynms

Advanced Learning - SPS' three-tier program for advanced learners. Made up of APP, Spectrum and ALOs. (Note: the name of the district program is "Advanced Learning Services and Programs" but these three programs fall under "Highly Capable Services" of AL Services and Programs.

ALO - Advanced Learning Opportunity, the third tier of SPS' Advanced Learning program

AP - Advanced Placement. A national program of college-level classes given in high schools.

APP - Accelerated Progress Program. One of the levels of the Advanced Learning Program. NOTE: the name of this program is now "HIGHLY CAPABLE COHORT." This change occurred in 2014.

ASB - Associated Student Body. High school leadership groups.

AYP - Adequate Yearly Progress. Part of NCLB.

BEX - Building Excellence. SPS' capital renovation/rebuilding program that is funded via the BEX levy. Every 3 years there is the Operations levy and either the BEX or BTA levies as those two levies rotate in six year cycles).

BLT - Building Leadership Team. Staff members at a school who meet regularly to discuss building issues.

BTA - Buildings, Technology, Academics. The major maintenance/other capital fund for SPS. Originally BTA was to cover major maintenance like HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning), roofs, waterlines, etc.) but now covers wide swaths of items like athletic fields, technology and funding academic needs.

CAICEE - Community Advisory Committee for Investing in Educational Excellence. Created by former Superintendent Manhas in 2008, to issue a report about reform recommendations for SPS.

CSIP - Continuous School Improvement Plan, the plan for improvement for each school as required by state law.

EOC - End of Course Assessments, given in math and science, required for high school graduationESEA - Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the federal law that governs education, includes the NCLB accountability provisions.

e-STEM or e-STEAM - STEM or STEAM curriculum with an environmental focus.

FACMAC - Facilities and Capacity Management Advisory Committee. A district committee comprises of an all-volunteer citizen group created in 2012 to help bring research and ideas to capacity management issues in the district.

FERPA - Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. A federal law that protects students' privacy

FRL - Free and reduced lunch.

FTE - Full Time Equivalent

FY - Fiscal Year

Highly Capable Services - NEW name (as of 2014) as umbrella name for these programs: Highly Capable Cohort (formerly APP), Spectrum and ALO (Advanced Learning Opportunities).

HSPE - High School Proficiency Exam, state assessment that replaced the WASL for 10th graders, required for graduation

HQT - Highly Qualified Teacher, a standard set by federal law

IA - Instructional Assistant

IB - International Baccalaureate program. An international program of advanced classes that can either be taken as stand alone or as part of an overall IB program.

IDEA - Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The federal law that governs special education

MAP - Measures of Academic Progress. A computer-based adaptive assessment made by NWEA and originally purchased by the district for use as a district-wide formative assessment but now used for a wide variety of purposes.

MSP - Measurement of Student Progress, the state proficiency assessment that replaced the WASL for students in grades 1-8

MTSS - Multi-Tiered Systems of Support

NCLB - No Child Left Behind, a provision of the federal education law, ESEA, introduced during the George W. Bush administration